On Thursday night, Cass Elaine and Apple came over to Sheung Wan to have “women talk” as ever since Apple came back from London the four of us haven’t really hang out together. Originally I thought it was just dinner and they coming up to see my new place (so they will know if it’s possible to host thanksgiving dinner here on the floor). It was only later that evening did I know they were planning to stay over for the night (and I had no cushions or pillows to make them feel comfy…), but everything worked out itself.
They had fun marveling how weird (and big) my place is, how it’s more like an office than a residence; how almost everything edible was expired (I didn’t let them know I threw away cans of soup because they’ve expired for a few years too…); how I had jars of peanut butter and very little food around the apartment; how my clothes were all on the floor because there were no furniture… etc.
We were talking about high school; both Apple and I studied in TIC for seven years, Cass and Elaine for two; Apple and I were classmates for two years, had the same art classes with Cass for the two last years, and none with Elaine. We just found out that Elaine and Cass, as two people from somewhere else, found the way TIC people think odd. We might land on the same conclusions sometimes, but turns out the way our minds work are very different from other people… which I guess is something I (and Apple) would never understand why.
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The night progressed. Things got emotional. Just this morning Edith made fun of me when she correctly predicted that I would sound as neutral as possible when it comes to people, and that night when we were talking about Apple’s year in London and the “quiet dispute” between her, Edith and some others I also tried not to take sides. It was difficult because I understood both of them in different ways; I knew how Edith operates, the hidden messages in her words, or how she deals with people, whilst I knew how Apple thinks and rationalizes things. Both are my dearest friends and now the argument was why didn’t they “communicate” in a straightforward manner. The funny thing was, what was Straightforward to one wasn’t to another.
As I’ve realized our behavior or our modes of thinking don’t really change or mature over time; refined, maybe, but rarely do change, especially after I’ve read my diary eight years ago (a month worth of entries can contain so much…). It wasn’t only me, but apparently my friends still possessed the same behavioral patterns or idiosyncrasies eight years ago. I knew Edith for ten years (OMG ten years??!?!) and we used to be frenemies – every now and then we get into small quarrels, then occasionally a big dramatic fight and later make up. The way we communicated were through various metaphors, stories even, analogies, puns… anything short of Straightforward. We were civil to each other face to face, doing nothing out of ordinary, but at times talking in “codes” or just good old sarcasm; the more obvious moves were our “statuses”, names, infos on ICQ and blogs. After a few years later when I looked back at some of the stuff we wrote to each other (I saved a copy of almost everything digital…) and it appeared to me that we were arguing completely different things, despite everything making sense at the time.
Now that we’re older and supposedly wiser, we don’t do that anymore (actually I think it’s because of the lack of opportunity). However, whenever I talk to her or anyone that we used to hang out with, I read into their words more than others would have in certain contexts, especially when we were all so used to talk in a sarcastic manner. That was how we communicate, and therefore often confusing many others. And that was how Apple got confused and the whole big mess started. She wasn’t used to that particular mode of communication and therefore had no idea she was in a midst of a fight when it was “obvious” to other people.
While Cass and Elaine were trying to make Apple see things their way in order for her to understand exactly what she has got herself into (though all three of us acknowledge the fact that both parties were at fault and no one was guilt free), I found myself deciding that immediate confrontations/communication is not always good. I told them that, exactly, about how it was between me and Apple right after the student union gig. We could hardly address one another without being vividly angry / irritated. It was after things cooled down, we avoided directly working with each other for awhile and things started to improve. The cooling down took almost two years. I didn’t know about Apple but I blatantly avoided talking about the year we had to work together in the student union because I wasn’t ready to talk about it nor did I believe she was either. Just recently, four to five years later (@@ why does everything take so long?!?!), I carefully tiptoed around the subject and most of the problems we had are finally resolved. So there are times you need to wait before talking it over with someone else; there are some things to be handled delicately. I wasn’t sure if this is one of the occasions, but if it is anything as serious as the others were making it out to be, then probably they should give it more time.
The next morning, Apple walked me to work and she told me her thoughts on the whole situation. There are certain people she knows she can really communicate without getting out of her way to find words to express certain things, because they get her (one of them is me, yay!). I told her, that Tannessa and I have that too, and when we were in school , we would just look at each other, smile, and went on doing whatever we were doing because we’ve already “communicated” with just our facial expressions (which was so often and out in the open that it weirded the guy in between us out). Also there were also times when we barely needed to complete our sentences and we knew what each other was thinking (actually I think they weren’t sentences… all there were, were exclamations and various snorts and grunts). Having that with someone is great, but that (at the very least to me) spoiled me, as I no longer need to word exactly what I think or how I feel. I don’t even have to use nouns or verbs in dialogues anymore. With Apple, our values and ways of thinking are very similar, allowing abstract concepts to be effectively, if not efficiently shared. However, that’s probably not the mode of communication we should depend on with other people.
At the risk of stating the obvious, communication is hard; and we can’t help witnessing it all too often.
